


Red Riding Hood

by Webdog177



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/F, Implied Sexual Content, Light BDSM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 09:20:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13268433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Webdog177/pseuds/Webdog177
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Ruby Rose. And this is not your child's bedtime story.  A darker re-telling of the Little Red Riding Hood fable. [Whiterose]





	Red Riding Hood

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing. And and all characters and settings belong to their original creators. This is for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> A/N: So, I've been wanting to do something like this for a while now. With a show like RWBY so heavily steeped in folklore, and the titular character being an 'interpretation' of the character from the fable "Little Red Riding Hood", I've been wanting to write a deconstruction/re-imagining of the show and that same fable all in one. So, what we have below is a re-telling... of a sort... of RWBY and Little Red Riding Hood, in all its dark, gritty and morbid glory. With sex. Because its me.
> 
> It's a little different (okay, pretty damn different) than my usual style, and that is both good and bad. I tried to work the theme and prose in the style of what I look for in a fable/fairy tale, because that is what this is. For the most part I believe it works, and I hope it doesn't scare anyone off until it really gets going. Just be thankful I didn't write the entire thing in Iambic Pentameter like I originally planned to. I would have given myself a brain aneurysm and died.
> 
> Okay. Enough of my rambling.
> 
> Enjoy.

_**Red Riding Hood** _

_For maximum enjoyment, please read in the narrator's voice of your choice. Might I suggest Peter Falk (The Grandfather in The Princess Bride)?_

0 – 0 – 0

 

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who was very tired of her life. Her name was Ruby Rose. Like most girls with her circumstances, the only available way to rebel from her predicament was to pretend to obey the commands given by others while protecting the secret world in which they were both creator and empress.

Her home life was a poor one – her doting mother died when she was little and she was left with only a cruel older sister and a drunkard for a father – and she would often escape to the woods nearby. Her family lived in a small farmhouse that felt smaller still because of the vast wilderness that surrounded it. She was at home in this untamed landscape, if only because there was nothing false in it; there was nothing expected of her there.

Nearly every single day she would run from her home, hidden in the birch trees or scrub oaks, where she was safe. She learned to let her thoughts turn away from her horrible family to the greenery around her, and become one with the forest. She became privy to an endless variety of fascinations; how beavers felled trees, how mice raised their offspring, the way a fox twitched its nose when it spotted its prey.

One day, when she was studying the spots on a fawn that dozed in a grove just a few dozen yards from where she crouched, her breath held, a wolf suddenly appeared. He – for there was no mistaking its gender with its thick, long legs, even if she hadn't spotted its genitals – shown with a gleaming silver color, with a rich, dark black at the roots of its thick fur. His teeth were a pearly white, and his eyes were an intelligent and fearless hazel. The two studied each other for long, countless minutes, wolf and girl, until he eventually lost interest in the silence and her motionless limbs, and then loped away.

The next time he came, he walked right up to her and put his nose up, making his expectation of some sort of greeting clear. So she slowly, carefully, lowered herself to the ground and allowed him to examine her face and body. His breath was very hot, perhaps because it was autumn and the days were growing chilly. His fur smelled of earth and the snow that would soon begin to fall, and slightly ran with the aroma she recognized as blood.

Apparently satisfied with her obedience, he went away again, tail wagging slightly, as if pleased with the outcome of his visit. It seemed to be slightly undignified of the wolf, but it did not make her think any less of the majestic creature. She appreciated the fact that the wolf did not bow and scrape, yelp or slaver on her in the way a domesticated dog would.

The wolf was no whore for man's approval, and she admired that.

She did not see the wolf again for two weeks. But when he finally returned, he brought others; three females and two males. One of the females was his mate. This female was nearly as large as her spouse and had fur as dark as he was silvery, the night sky to his moon.

Some instinct told Ruby Rose that she must drop to all fours to greet them, and then roll over on her back as she did before. This seemed to amuse and excite everyone. She was nosed repeatedly, somewhat roughly at times, licked a handful of instances, and then nipped once on the shoulder. The surprisingly painful bite came from the leader of the pack, who was letting her know that it was time to get up and run away with them.

Racing with the wolves was like a dream to her, or perhaps it was her normal life that was the dream, for the long run with the wolf pack was like gliding through vivid sensations that made everything that had happened to her indoors on two feet seemed drained – devoid of any color or meaning. She never once questioned her ability to keep up with the wolves any more than she questioned the new shape her body seemed to wear like a second skin. Her legs pumped tirelessly, taking in the joy of running. Even her hunger was a song trilling in her belly. And when the pack cut off from their path and cornered a deer, she knew her place in the attack as if she had read and memorized her part in their play.

After they ate, they slept, yawning widely with the effort it took to digest all the fresh, bloody meat. She was unaccustomed to such a diet of red meat, and she slept too.

She woke up miles from her home, in the harsh daylight. Every muscle in her body seemed to cry with aches and pains. Her clothing was torn to shreds, her shoes were gone and her stockings were ruined, and her hair was full of leaves and twigs. But, somehow, she made it home, limping weakly, all the while trying to think up a story to excuse her absence and the sad state of herself.

There turned out to be no need. Her family had already decided what must have happened to her; that Ruby Rose had followed a butterfly or a jay out into the wilderness and gotten lost. When she entered her farmhouse and heard the story and saw that her sister and father had each taken a role in her punishment, just like the wolves that had memorized their places in the play that ended with the death of the deer, they fell upon her.

And she gave herself up to them, too exhausted to fight back, letting them exclaim over how to handle and hurt her with her melodrama and needless worry. Though, as they rounded on her, a small part of her sputtered silently, indignantly,

_Lost! In the woods! Where I've roamed every day since I could walk?_

_I'm more likely to forget how to sew and to clean and to talk!_

Unfortunately, when she had gone missing they had also called upon Qrow the Huntsman and asked him to search for her. He was someone she avoided at all costs.

Rather close her father, Qrow had a barn that was covered with nailed-up, tanned hides of animals, and a roof thatched with the antlers of deer he had slain. Ruby Rose thought the entire thing quite grotesque. But her father, as much of a drunk as Qrow himself was, insisted that the Huntsman was a man of worth. Still, she could not tolerate a stranger whose appetites felt revoltingly familiar to her.

When Qrow the Huntsman took a drink from his flask, he waved his hand and put a stop to the whining voices so glad of their opportunity to rein her in. She gaped at the man, hoping against her own better judgment that he would have something sensible to add to the discussion. He then spoke loudly and clearly, as if used to being listened to:

_"Now, now. No need to restrict this young woman's love of nature, her little hobby,_

_I don't doubt it gives her much pleasure to collect leaves and twigs... 'Tis not so naughty."_

In point of fact, she had never once done this. But she knew that many young ladies did, and so she bit her tongue, thinking it would be a good excuse for the future.

_"I have brought something to solve this problem,_

_For the days are just cool, and still only autumn."_

Then Qrow the Huntsman shook out a bright red garment and held it out to her.

It was a large scarlet suede-leather cloak with a hood, heavy enough to keep her warm well into the winter. The lining was a smooth, slippery material that made her slightly ill to touch it. He had kept hold of the garment as he handed it over to her, so their hands touched when she took it from him, and her eyes instinctively met with his. The predatory desire she saw there made her bow her head as if in embarrassment, but it was in fact to hide her anger. Even during a killing strike, the wolves knew nothing as shameful and abhorrent as the desire in the Huntsman's eyes.

She knew, instinctively, that he had bought this red-hooded cloak for her some time ago and would often sit studying it, dreaming of how she would look laid down upon it on his bed of animal furs. If she wore it in the forest, she would be visible for miles, especially in the snow. It would be easy for this Huntsman, Qrow, to target and track her.

She was poked and prodded and prompted to thank the man, but would not. Instead she feigned tiredness. And so she was carried up to bed, feeling the Huntsman's scowl follow her supine body up the stairs like a man refused consummation on his wedding night.

It was weeks before she was deemed well enough to leave the house. The red cloak hung in her closet in the meantime, its bright splash of color rendering all of her other clothes drab and gray rags. It would snow soon, and she did not think she would survive being stranded behind the pack, in human form, to find her way home in a winter storm. But she knew she must encounter them again, if only to prove to herself that the entire adventure had not been some fevered dream.

Her chance finally came. A neighbor of hers she did not particularly care for – the ailing sister of Qrow the Huntsman – was in bed with a broken leg. Her name was Raven Branwen. As a little girl, Ruby Rose would go to Raven with her troubles, mistaking the woman's age and close proximity to her home for kindness. Her hope to be rescued, or at least comforted, was stamped out of existence when the woman called her many of the same named her had heard from her own father, when he was ill with drink. The child's sense of betrayal was hot in her gut, but was quickly replaced with stoicism and apathy to the woman.

One of the other neighbors, a very prosperous older couple with a crop of numerous daughters very much overripe for marriage, was hosting a dance – with an orchestra! People were to come in the early afternoon for supper, dance in the evening, and then spend the night. Her own father had his own small market of daughters to attend to, but their house was closer to Raven Branwen's than everyone else. They were expected to go lend a hand to the woman in her time of need.

What a relief it was, then, when Ruby Rose quietly announced at breakfast that she thought it might do her soul good to visit the sick and unfortunate woman that day. She was young, and there would be other fanciful events to attend. Her sister could go and enjoy herself.

As her father and sister bustled around the house in preparation, she made up a basket of essentials. She picked things that she herself was especially fond of because she knew anything she brought would be found quite unpalatable by the injured, scathing woman. She helped her sister into her new dress, found her missing handbag and hair ribbons, sewed a buckle back onto her loafers, and kissed her goodbye. Her father, realizing that no embrace would be offered to him, avoided the opportunity altogether. As soon as the carriage disappeared around the bed, she set off in the hated red cloak and kept the thing on until she had gone over a rise and down the other side.

When she was well out of range she took off the cloak, bundling it up as small as she could, and stuffed it inside a hollowed-out tree. She hoped that the birds and squirrels would find it and rip it to shreds, and use it to make their winter nests. At the foot of this tree she sat, snug in her nut-brown cloak she had worn underneath the Huntsman's 'gift' and ate every single thing she had brought in the basket. By the time she had finished her feast, it was nearly dark. Cheerful beyond measure to be free of human society, she began her quest to find her pack mates, her brothers and sisters of the wild.

Faster and faster she went as her need for them became more and more desperate, the world streaming by in a blur of fall colors. The cold air cut into her lungs like a blade, and she found herself pressing the little scar the wolf had given her on her shoulder, using the pang to keep herself moving forward. The sun dipped below the hills, and she ran on four legs now, chasing hints among the delicious odors that flooded her nose and mouth. At last she found a spot where they had passed, a trail that led to their den, and the reunion was a happy one.

There was a pleased but orderly circle of greeting and blessings – smelling, licking, and tail-wagging – and sticks and bones were tossed into the air and tugged back and forth.

Then they hunted, and all was well. She was happy at last to be among them, an anchor to their established hierarchy. Despite her status as a novice, she knew enough to be useful to the pack.

But this time, forewarned that dawn would put an end to her four-footed form, the young woman took precautions. While everyone else turned in the direction of the den, where they could doze off their meat-drunk state, she bid them farewell with a heart-broken nudge of her nose, and retraced her path back to the hollow tree. There, she slept a little, until dawn forced her to don her hated red cloak again and return home. She was lucky this time and arrived well before her hung-over, overfed, and over-loved relations.

She thought that, perhaps, with what she now knew, she could endure the rest of her life. She would have two lives now, one within this little farmhouse and the other in the  _rest_  of the world. Knowing herself to be dangerous when it came to it, she could perhaps tolerate bearing a child. And so she made herself agreeable to her father and sister, helping them divest themselves of their soiled finery and put out a cold lunch of chicken and vegetables for them. She herself was not hungry, and the smell of the cooked meat made her nauseous.

She had not planned to go out again that night. She knew that if her excursions became too frequent, she would risk being discovered missing from her bed. But when the moon came up, it was as if she were possessed. She could not possibly stay indoors. She pined for the soothing sensation of soft earth between her paws, and gallop after game, the sweet, reassuring smell of her pack mates as they accepted her place among them. And so she slipped out, knowing it unwise of her. The only concession she made to being human was to take the red cloak with her.

And that is just how Qrow the Huntsman found her, in the full moon, catching her just as she slipped the red cloak off her shoulders.

_"What have we here, on this moonlit night?_

_For deciding to follow you, in the end I was right."_

His voice was soft, and as he spoke the soft  _shink_  of his knife echoing through the trees.

Ruby Rose could not answer him.

_"What is the matter? Cat got your tongue?_

_Or maybe it is a wolf that has it, I wonder, of one so young?"_

His face was cruel, inhumane in the moonlight.

_"Damn you and your cold looks. Are you truly so dense?_

_I have something here that will melt your ice and bring you sense."_

He then took her by the wrist and forced her, struggling, to follow up along the path that led to his house. She could have slipped from his grasp if she took her wolf form, but something told her that she must keep her human wits about her to deal with what he had to show her.

There was something new nailed up in his barn, a huge pelt that shown in the full moonlight like a well-polished silvery gem. It was the skin of her leader, her master, the lord of her  _other_  world. The blessed creature that had saw fit to nip her on the shoulder and free her from human life, from human expectations.

Qrow the Huntsman was leering down at her, gloating, telling her about his kill, about how easy she had made it for him to find their den, and how he promised to return and take yet another wolf's life for every night she refused his bed.

His lewd fantasies about her wolfing activities proved, she thought numbly, that he was very much ignorant about both of wolves and of women. The wolves were lustful only rarely, and the king and queen of the pack would mate; no others. The alpha – the silver male – had loved her, but there was nothing sexual about his love. He had been drawn to her misery and decided out of generosity to set her heart free. And her desire had been for the wilderness, for running as hard and as fast and long as she could, for a thirst that only a cold mountain spring could quench, and a hunger that could only be slaked by burying her nose in the hot mess of another creature's belly.

She craved all of this, not the sweaty invasion of her violated womanhood.

But Qrow the Huntsman slurred on with his coarse fantasies of her bestial orgies, concluding,

_"And after all this time I pined for you, I thought you so innocent and lovely,_

_Now I find that you're just another bitch in heat. How dare you refuse me!"_

She then cried out, finally finding her voice,

_"Refuse you?_

_You think this so true?"_

She trembled from head to toe, her voice shaking as she spoke.

_"Why, Sir, all you had to do was ask it and yours I would be._

_Had it never even occurred to you that such a simple girl_

_Would never dream that a man of the world take an interest in me?"_

It was a lie, but a necessary one. He lifted his arms from his belt to wrap around her, and then she yanked his knife from it's sheathe and plunged it deep into his back.

His face set in astonishment as he died, blood dribbling from his mouth and back. She thought it was simple enough punishment for the many lives he had taken in his Huntsman's pride and hatred of the wild. She withdrew the knife, intent on keeping it, and let him crumple to the dirt.

She dragged him out of the barn by his heels and back into his house. She was surprised to find that his sister, the hated Raven Branwen, was also dead – murdered by her brother in her sleep it looked like – but she couldn't bring herself to care.

Then she took the hide of her beloved down from the barn wall, trembling as she did so. It fell into her arms like a lover and she wept for him, catching traces of his scent, which still lingered upon his lifeless fur like the memories of sage and pine trees, rabbit-fur and a fresh kill. It was simple enough to saddle the Huntsman's horse, take food and money from the house, and then set fire to what remained. The horse did not like her mounting up with a wolf's skin clutched to her bosom, but she dug her heels and knees in to make it mind her, and then turned its nose towards the city, far away from her home.

Since a human male had taken what was dearest to her, Ruby Rose determined, the rest of the Huntsman's kind now owed her reparations. She would no longer suffer under her father's dictions about propriety and her sister's lessons about virtue. She would no longer keep silent and let humans, too sure of their strength, back her into a corner. The wolves had taught her much about the wilderness, about hunters and prey, about power and pursuit. One human or a thousand, she hated them all, and so she would go where they all clustered together in fear of the wild, and show them their worth.

In the city, the Huntsman's coin provided her lodging in a good part of town. Down the street from where she stayed she found a craftsman who worked in leather, and had the hated red cloak destroyed. In its place she made a smaller, close-fitting hooded hood, and a red whip with a large, bulbous handle.

The very next day she placed an advertisement for 'riding lessons' in the newspaper. Soon after, a man called upon her to see if she could teach him anything. He was young like her, blonde of hair and blue of eye. Jaune Arc was his name, but she didn't care. To her, he was just the same as the Huntsman. Too sure of his own abilities, wealthy, privileged enough to still be trapped by human society. It had deepened his ingrained resentment of anything wild, feral, and was ripe for taming.

Since he hated the animal hidden within himself so much, she forced him to manifest it; stripping away anything but his bare hide, on all fours, forbidden to utter any sounds save for a yowl or howl. He could not be trusted to manage himself, so she commanded him thusly. And because he believed animal was inferior to man, made to be used by humans violently, she beat him in the way a drunkard would beat his dog when he returned home from losing a game of dice.

He soon forgot her command against speech when it became clear how the 'riding lesson' was proceeding, but she refused to curb her punishment. Like most men, he thought of women as cows or breeding stock, so if he wanted to experience the servitude and degradation of such, he would have to experience sexual violation as well as the lash. Bent over her table, wrists tied to his ankles, he bleated like a wounded animal when the handle of her whip violated him over and over.

In the end, he proved her judgment of his character correct. He knelt, swore allegiance to her, and attempted to lick her feet like a dog wanting a scap from the table. She took his money and kicked him out with a warning to not attempt to dirty her furniture in the future. He went away happy with the lesson, his anger and confusion sated, and his soul lighter with the amount of silver he had left in the bowl on her table.

Soon Ruby Rose's sitting room was full of a series of men – and women – that arrived full of lust and shame and left poorer, but wiser of their own natures. But their pain was no balm for the wounds that Red Riding Hood, as she came to be called, carried inside of her. Her self-styled slaves might prattle on about worship and call her their mistress, but the only thing they worshiped was their own pleasure. She knew, even as she stepped on their balls and violated them sexually, that they still remained the  _real_  masters of their world.

Her consolations were meager and private; the occasional meal of dripping red meat, and nightly slumber beneath a blanket of silvery fur. For an entire year, she tolerated the crowds, the bad smells, and disgustingly cooked food of the city. Her fame spread, and gossip about her unnatural beauty and cruelty brought her paying customers from far and wide. The notion that one could buy a little freedom from the trappings of everyday lives, pay for a limited amount of the wilderness, both bored and amused Red Riding Hood. But she kept her thoughts to herself and kept her money even closer. She lived like a pauper, but the tools she used were not cheap, so she waited to see how long it took for her wealth to accumulate enough to look elsewhere to live.

When spring came, at first it simply made the city stink even worse than usual, as thawing snow deposited a season's worth of excrement and waste in the streets. There was a single tree near Ruby Rose's home, and she was painfully reminded of how beautiful and busy the forest would have been now, with sap rising and pushing new green leaves into the warming air.

Her own blood seemed to have heated as well, and it grew more and more difficult to curb her temper with the presence of submission that filled her coffers. An inhuman strength would come upon her without warning, and more than a few of her slaves left with unwanted marks from her teeth upon their bodies and thoughts that perhaps they should consider visiting a new mistress; one whom did not take her craft as seriously might not go amiss

The full moon of April caught her unawares, standing naked by her bedroom window, and before she even willed it she was herself again, four-footed and sleek. After so many months of despicably hard work and pauperish living, she was unable to deny herself the pleasure of keeping this form for just a short while.

The wolf was fearless and went out the front door as if she owned it. Prowling pack of stray dogs were just one of the many hazards in this city's nighttime streets. Few pedestrians would be bold enough to confront a canine her size and apparent ferocity. When she heard the sound of conflict, she approached; unbound by a woman's timidity and ruled by the wolf's confident assumption that wherever there is violence, there may be victuals.

Down a street more racked with poverty than the one on which Red Riding Hood operated, outside a tenement, a man in a worn overcoat and a top hat held a woman by the upper arms and shook her like a baby with its rattle. She was being handled so roughly that her hair had begun to come down from where it had been piled up on her head, so that her face and chest were surrounded by a silvery cloud. It was the exact same shade as her master's shimmery silver fur, and she was held transfixed, almost overlooking the low-cut white dress that left her arms indecently bare, and the slit up the back that displayed her calves and creamy white thighs.

_"You think me a fool, do you? Damn you!_

_Give me my money or so help me I'll strike true!"_

The wolf did not like his grating, hysterical voice he used to scream at the woman, and her appetite was piqued by the fat tips of the man's sausage-like fingers. He reeked of alcohol and old wool; of something that should not even be alive. When he let go of one of the woman's arms so he could pull a handkerchief from his coat and wipe his brow, the wolf came from the shadows and greeted him with a whispered snarl and a peek of pearly teeth. He was both shocked and frightened.

The same pocket that held the handkerchief also held a straight razor, but before he could even fumble with it, the wolf landed directly in his center and knocked him back into the mud. A bright red scarf, looking disgustingly like an old red cloak the wolf barely could remember, outlined his throat and was no obstacle.

He tasted horrible and the wolf hated to devour him. He was fatter than she preferred, but dissolute living had contaminated the flesh. She did not want to digest his sickness, but did so regardless, incentivized by the scent of his fear as he died.

Licking her muzzle clean, she was surprised to see the disheveled woman waiting calmly downwind, her bosom and face marred by her pimp's attacks.

_"Thank you helping me. I would have surely died._

_I am all alone in this world, and for me no one would have cried."_

She spoke so quietly into the night that she hardly spoke at all. She somehow knew that her savior was no domesticated pet slipped from its leash. Her life had been very difficult, but she would not have lived very long indeed if she were not able to take what was in front of her and work out the truth.

Human speech filled the wolf with unease. She did not want to be reminded of her human form, her other life. She brushed past the woman, eager to pass on and take in the evening and determine if this city had anywhere she could explore uninterrupted.

_"Please, Wild Mistress, let me come with you,_

_For it is your life I now must give mine to."_

Her bell-like voice and soft footsteps pattered in the wolf's silent wake. The wolf could have left her far behind in a second, but in a fit of perverseness decided not to.

They soon came to the outskirts of a wealthy estate. The mansion was in the center of a tract of land that was huge by the city's standards and stocked with everything from game birds to deer. A tall, wrought-iron fence surrounded this land, and the silver-haired woman made herself useful, discovering a place where the rivets holding several spears of iron in place had rusted through. She bent three of them upward so they could squeeze beneath the barrier. The scent of crushed vegetation and freshly disturbed earth made the wolf's blood sing.

Through the park they chased each other, faster and faster, until the woman's shoes were worn paper-thin and were discarded. The game of tag got rougher and rougher until the wolf forgot it was not tumbling with one of its own and nipped the girl on the forearm. The wound bled enough to be visible in the moonlight, scarlet and pale silver. Then they were two of a kind, one with dark red fur and one with silver, and what would be better for a hunt than a fawn? One hid in the brush while the other flushed out their sleepy quarry.

Knowing the potentially deadly sleep that would come soon after their feeding, Ruby Rose urged her new companion to keep moving, back under the fence. The two of them approached her house from behind, entering through her garden. Silver didn't want to go back to two feet, did not want to take up human ways again. But Ruby Rose herded her without mercy, forcing her up the stairs and into the chamber where they both became dirt and blood-splattered women, howling with deranged laughter.

_"You are a strange, delicious dream,_

_I would kiss you, but I fear for a most heinous scheme."_

Silver murmured these words as Red Riding Hood led her to bed.

_"If I am a dream, then I am a dream of freedom from the trappings of Man,_

_For it is from them, a long time ago, I gladly ran."_

Ruby Rose replied, and pinned her prey to the sheets just as she had taken down numerous others before.

The wolf-strength was still thrumming within her, and she ravished the girl with her mouth and hands, her kisses flavored with blood from the feast they had shared. Silver was no stranger to the comfort of another woman's caresses, it seemed, but this was no gentle embrace. There was pain in this hope and need. She struggled against new knowledge that filled her, and the Red Riding Hood was relentless in showing her how much pleasure and happiness she could cause, and Silver knew her life was both ruined and changed forever.

Silver did not rest until she had claimed a place for herself in the core of her new lover's being. It was the first time in her life that Ruby Rose had known anything besides humiliation and disgust from feeling another human's touch. Her capacity to receive pleasure was shocking, and nothing seemed more natural to her than seizing this dream by her silvery mane and demanding another kiss, another bite and another touch. They fell asleep on top of the sheets, wearing nothing but a shared mantle of sweat and dirt and blood to keep them warm.

Dawn brought a less than forgiving mood. Red Riding Hood was furious that someone had dared to break into her solitude. She had not planned to share her life with another living soul, and now she had not only revealed herself to this girl, but also made her a sister wolf.

Weiss – for that was her name, or so she said – would not accept any money. Nor would she be sent away. And so Red Riding Hood put her would-be suitor to the most severe of tests.

Rather than imprisoning her in irons or bondage, Ruby Rose bade Weiss to pick up her skirts, assume a vulnerable position bent over her bed, and keep it until she was ordered to rise. With whip and cane she meted out the harshest treatment possible, unwilling to believe that Weiss' fealty was genuine until it was written in bloody welts over her body. The severest of blows were met with unflinching resolve, with no response save for silent weeping.

When her rage was finally spent, Ruby Rose made Weiss kiss the proof of her ambition that dripped scarlet from her cane, and then the two of them wept together, feeling only the reassurance of each other's presence.

That night the silver-haired girl from the streets who had spent most of her life sleeping on the floor crept into bed, under warm wolf's hide and into Red Riding Hood's arms, and made love to her so slowly and tenderly that Ruby Rose did not fully awake until she nearly climaxed. It was clear that they would never sleep apart again as long as either of them would live.

They became mates, much like Ruby Rose's master and his mate, a pack of two, paired predators whose customers were more than prepared to pay extra to be conquered by. With the comfort and challenge of each other's company, the work became much less arduous and more profitable. Red Riding Hood's income had doubled, and by the time another year had passed, they had enough money to leave the human world for good.

On a cool day in autumn, a month or so before the first snow fall, she locked up her house for the last time, leaving everything behind save for a trunk of coin, the maid, and warm clothing; it would not be needed. They left on a coach, a large silver fur thrown across their knees, and headed towards the mountains.

No one in the city ever saw Red Riding Hood and her mistress again.

The pair purchased property in the wild and mountainous country, a land no sane person would ever use, nor attempt to cultivate. They marked their territory with their leftover money, warning hunters and wanders alike away. There was a small cabin, suitable for simple living, and a stable that was stocked with a season's worth of horse feed.

Their first night of freedom, amidst the trees and bushes, under the benevolent moon to keep their secrets, Ruby Rose took the form she had longed for as long as she could remember while bound by human society. Weiss set herself free and wild as well, and then the two of them set off to explore their new home.

They lived happily ever after, for the rest of their days.

0 – 0 – 0

_**Fin** _

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Many thanks to all who stuck around to see the (read: heartwarming) end. Like I said, a bit different, no? I hope you enjoyed it, regardless.
> 
> ***Will work for glomps***


End file.
